When the crowd moved from Sounds on Sunday’s 4th Birthday celebrations to After Ours at YU, One Man went with them to push his scant privileges as an ITM reporter to the limit to bring you this review:

As I entered the already pumping After Ours, I was greeted with the sight of Craig Obey and Matt Roberts going back-to-back, playing Groove Armada’s “Easy”. The two bounced off each other, often having the same song playing so that they could cut, drop and loop it, much to the crowd’s delight. The pair put a few Eminem samples on over the course of their set, most memorably a lot of scratching of his line “Nobody listens to techno”. Obey and Roberts played killer tracks; one that set the crowd right off was “Salt Shaker” by Boogie Pimps. Throughout their set Obey and Roberts had MC Fro doing some patented free-styling and great live saxophone by Steve Saxx. The duo stepped down to a big round of applause from the crowd, looking very happy with each other, as Shamus, sporting a shorter haircut, took control.

I headed upstairs to catch some of Jonathan Wall’s set, which included “Temptation” by Underworld with a nice layering of some Plump DJ’s over the top. Wall also kept the room pumping to sick breaks with an interesting remix of “Clubbed to Death” by Rob D. After his set I got a chance to talk to Jonathan Wall (producer of Fuzzy Breaks). Wall answered my questions with the line, “Yeah… I like breaks.” And “Yeah… I like breaks.” Or even “Yeah… I like breaks” I knew I had made progress and was onto a whole new interview technique when he changed tack to “Breaks… Yeah I like them.” sigh

Kid Kenobi took over the decks from Wall and proceeded to rally the crowd with tracks like “Got Your Wild Thing” by Spidercuts and his own remix of Green Velvet’s “La La Land”. Next to the booth during Kenobi’s set was his girlfriend, Chloe Maxwell, and the man who co-remixed “La La Land” with Kid Kenobi – Pocket. I decided to talk to Ms Maxwell for a bit in the hope of scoring an interview with Kenobi. Chloe was very open, introducing me to Pocket and telling me that she thought “that there is a lot of DJ talent in Australia that does not receive the attention it deserves due to tall poppy syndrome.” When asked about an interview with her boyfriend, she said it would be no problem after his set. Also near the booth was, according to Chloe, Kid Kenobi’s number one fan: Morgan. I was talking to Morgan about Kenobi’s popularity just as he put on “The Rock” by Punx, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Kenobi ran into a bit of trouble half way through his set, when the speakers started to fail distorting the bass, seeking help from crowd technicians Sam and Garth for help. I also met up with the ITM photographer silvaside and his mate unscarred as they scored some pictures of the Kid in action. As Kid Kenobi finished up his set, giving up the turntables to James Taylor, I joined the man in the booth for my promised interview. Kenobi was very easy to talk to, and seemed to enjoy not only breaks, but a variety of other music too.

Me: Who would be your favourite DJ tonight?

Kenobi: James Taylor for sure mate. I think he has got a lot of talent.

Me: Yeah he sounds it. What are your favourite three songs of all time?

Kenobi: I couldn’t say that I have favourites of all time. My tastes change as new music comes out. But if I had to make a list it would be a list of both new stuff and some old classics.

Me: Versatile… Nice. Any big gigs coming up that I should watch out for?

Kenobi: No actually – I am taking most of July off to write some music, so not many gigs.

Me: Ah, very interesting. Got any comments to add regarding tonight?

Kenobi: Yeah – Its been a long weekend!

The standout act of the night though was Illya, who dropped tracks onto each other virtually blindly. It was the third time I had seen Illya and I had been looking forward to his set all night and I don’t think anybody was disappointed. Illya pushed tracks to the limit, tweaking, cutting, warping and scratching them as much as he could do. The thing that attracts me to Illya’s style is that he is always tweaking and playing with the track and he doesn’t mind playing the odd classic such as “Whoop! There it is” by Tag Team. Swooping over three turntables and a mixer he sent the crowd wild, and when the time came for him to bring After Ours to a close, we chanted for more, and more he gave us spinning out another four or five tracks before he stepped down to massive applause from the veterans who had stayed through. We soon tumbled out onto the street, squinting at the light of 7:30 in the morning before heading for home to recover.